There is another respect in which we of the North have a “just concern” with the slavery of the slave states.  We see nearly three millions of our fellow men in those states robbed of body, mind, will, and soul—­denied marriage and the reading of the Bible, and marketed as beasts.  We see them in a word crushed in the iron folds of slavery.  Our nature—­the laws written upon its very foundations—­the Bible, with its injunctions “to remember them that are in bonds as bound with them,” and to “open thy mouth for the dumb in the cause of all such as are appointed to destruction”—­all require us to feel and to express what we feel for these wretched millions.  I said, that we see this misery.  There are many amongst us—­they are anti-abolitionists—­who do not see it; and to them God says; “but he that hideth his eyes shall have many a curse.”

I add, that we of the North must feel concerned about slavery in the slave states, because of our obligation to pity the deluded, hard-hearted, and bloody oppressors in those states:  and to manifest our love for them by rebuking their unsurpassed sin.  And, notwithstanding pro-slavery statesmen at the North, who wink at the iniquity of slave holding, and pro-slavery clergymen at the North, who cry, “peace, peace” to the slaveholder, and sew “pillows to armholes,” tell us, that by our honest and open rebuke of the slaveholder, we shall incur his enduring hatred; we, nevertheless, believe that “open rebuke is better than secret love,” and that, in the end, we shall enjoy more Southern favor than they, whose secret love is too prudent and spurious to deal faithfully with the objects of its regard.  “He that rebuketh a man, afterward shall find more favor than he that flattereth with the tongue.”  The command, “thou shall in any wise rebuke thy neighbor and not suffer sin upon him,” is one, which the abolitionist feels, that he is bound to obey, as well in the case of the slaveholder, as in that of any other sinner.  And the question:  “who is my neighbor,” is so answered by the Savior, as to show, that not he of our vicinity, nor even he of our country, is alone our “neighbor.”

The abolitionists of the North hold, that they have certainly as much “just concern” with slavery in the slave states, as the temperance men of the North have with “intemperance” at the South.  And I would here remark, that the weapons with which the abolitionists of the North attack slavery in the slave states are the same, and no other than the same, with those, which the North employs against the vice of intemperance at the South.  I add too, that were you to say, that northern temperance men disregard “the deficiency of the powers of the General Government,” and also “the acknowledged and incontestable powers of the states;” your charge would be as suitable as when it is applied to northern abolitionists.